There appeared new info on the just announced mobile AMD Duron CPU. At first everybody was very happy about the launching of this processor. And then everybody got really upset about the high heat dissipation it features. Now that the first benchmarks of the CPU are available, there appear a couple of other causes for optimism.

Benchmark	Mobile AMD Duron 700MHz	Mobile Pentium III 700MHz	Mobile Celeron 700MHz
FPU WinMark99	3830	3700	3700
CPUmark99	59.3	63.6	54.4
Ligos Technology GoMotion smaller value - faster performance	41.25	50.25	52.40

As for the third benchmark, Ligos Technology GoMotion, it’s a totally different story since it’s MPEG-encoding, which is not that common for use on notebooks. However, the first two tests are quite interesting. To tell the truth, it looks as if AMD was greatly mistaken to have called this CPU a Duron. If they had called it something like "mobile Athlon", for instance, it could have been moved to a different category right away. Then, it wouldn’t have to comply with the requirements for Low-End processors. On the other hand, high power consumption remains on the agenda. In fact, the current mobile Duron isn’t yet well prepared and adjusted for fitting the mobile market. However, we do believe that heat dissipation issue can be eliminated, while the potential (FSB, memory, etc.) remains for ever. :)
We find it useful to add that the situation with Duron’s high heat dissipation can be improved in May-June when the new mobile Duron processors based on Morgan core come out. First, they are very likely to be working at lower Vcore (which will automatically result in lower power consumption), and second, they will also support PowerNow! (which will allow reducing the CPU working frequency in case it is battery powered). Although Duron processors are still too far away from the "1W CPUs", which are expected to be announced by Intel this month already...